Butterfly Wisdom
by PinkWhirlWind
Summary: Yaoi! It's after the movie, Evan's trying to find his balance and gets help from a surprise source.


Butterfly Wisdom

by Pinkwhirlwind

Disclaimer: I don't own the Butterfly Effect. Highly tweeky and thoughtful movie. Recommend it, but not if you're pts'ing

Notes: Set after the movie

Warning: This is a yaoi story, as in male/male. The romantic pairing is Lenny/Evan

Evan's pen touched the paper, softly, little blue feathers of indecision lining up meaninglessly on the first page of a blank journal. There had always been journals. It was part of who he had always been. Had been.

but

now

This time

Everything was different.

People could change so quickly. He knew this. Long fingers, graceful, but with too many lives behind them, turned to the back of the blank journal. A blond smile, head tilted, cocky, yet so vulnerable, open. Evan knew that soul behind those eyes maybe better than the mind behind those eyes did.

Love. It was not the same as sexual desire, and the addition of that longing had confused the scars off of Evan's soul. He knew the perversions of sex, in men and women, though he'd not had those experiences in this life, but he knew them, nonetheless, and they frightened him.

Even in the life where he'd been with her, he hadn't been himself and she hadn't known or loved who he was. He walked differently. He talked differently.

Part of him wanted to use the journal entry he wasn't writing, the patterns of loss and alienation to prove that no one would ever love him. Just as when he'd started running that water in that tub, he had a certainty that everyone would be better off without him.

Head down on the desk, his pen rolled towards the floor and he didn't try to stop it. Dark hair over his face, half hiding his tears, soaking the rain of his soul. Humans are not meant to be alone, not forever, hiding what no one else would ever believe.

"Evan?" The door closed with a click as Lenny let himself into their dorm. "Hey, man."

"Leave me alone."

"Oh fuck that," Lenny said, words gentle, but determined. "We gotta talk."

The world was a carefully stacked set of dishes, one moment moving into the next and a sudden fear grabbed Evan. What he said to Lenny might affect Lenny's life, might make changes that he couldn't know. He could never go back and change things, never again. If he broke something, it would stay broken. He was a menace, a danger, everyone he ever loved or needed would suffer because of him.

And then it was two hours later and he lay shaking, strong arms around him, holding him. Fingers, warm against his chilled skin, brushed over his face, smoothed tangled black hair back away from his face, brushing lightly over a shadow of facial hair. "Evan, it's okay. Everything's really okay. I know everything now, just let me, let me take care of you for a little while, okay?"

"Let go of me!" Anger held him almost as strongly as Lenny did, and then panic kicked in as well. Hateful demanding hands, pinning, violating and his memory etched acid over memories that had never really happened in this life of his. "I hate you!"

"It's alright, Evan, It's alright," Lenny chanted softly, holding the shaking form of his friend. "I'm here. I know. You told me, Evan, you told me everything and I understand. I believe you and I'll hold you here. Do you get it? I'm not going to let you go."

"You don't know shit." Evan's words were deflated, unsettled by the strong conviction in Lenny's words, by the firm, but protective arms wrapped around him. "I hurt you."

"Yeah. So. I hurt you too, didn't I? A man ain't perfect, no matter what magic shit he's got in his head. Are you listening to me, Evan? Paradoxes and shit, but you came and you told me what happens if you do the crack headed thing you were thinking about, but that's not the part that scared me."

Evan, finally coming a little bit up out of the panic and after blackout haze, shoved himself up on an elbow and looked down at his blond dorm-mate. "What are you talking about?"

"You. Time travel, memory travel, whatever the hell you're calling it. Paradoxes. I don't care. Evan, you're my friend, more, you're special. I don't care what was in some other time line."

"You never have made any sense, much, Lenny," Evan teased, his smile thin, but lighter than the darkness he'd been drowning in. "Yeah, well, what something in all that made me homosexual. What if I'm gay? You wanna get your arms off of me now?"

"Nope," Lenny said, blushing just a little. "That was something your future self said too. No babies for you, Evan. More, if you go turn around and whack yourself before you're even fucking born, like you were thinking about, so I don't get to know you and I get to die of HIV looking for someone who looks like you… well, then you'd come up with the cure for this stuff you got and you said it was a dominant gene. You have to survive and you have to find out more about it."

"I didn't know you were gay. Lenny, why didn't you tell me?"

"Oh sure, being fat wasn't enough to deal with? I don't know, maybe I was waiting for it to go away? It's okay if you don't like me, you know, that way, Evan. But you threatened me with it first anyway. I just wanted you know now you mean a lot to me, and you shouldn't sell your life so damn cheap."

"Lenny," Evan whispered, then suddenly sat up, pulled his knees to his chest. "You really believe me?"

"Yeah. You really believe me?"

"Yeah," Evan said, and some warmth settled into him, something deeper and truer than all the layers of lives and tragedy. "I do believe you, Lenny."


End file.
